The Bob Devaney Sports Center has been the home of Nebraska basketball since 1976.

Photo Courtesy Scott Bruhn/NU Media Relations

Courtesy: NU Media Relations

02/14/2013

Randy York’s N-Sider

While looking ahead to a
future inside the upscale Pinnacle
Bank Arena, Nebraska Athletics wants to remember and honor our past, so
we’re asking fans of the Husker men’s and women’s basketball programs a
compelling question: Who would be on your All-Devaney Center Teams that
cover five different decades in the 37-year history of the building?

Both basketball programs
deserve equal amounts of emphasis, and the only requirement to participate in
these two special Huskers.com Fan Polls is that each all-time selection must
have played in the Bob
Devaney Sports Center, which opened its doors in 1976 – the same year
America celebrated Birthday No. 200 and Nebraska smokers built a new arena
using tobacco taxes authorized by the State Legislature.

Barfknecht is the only
media member to cover all six of Nebraska’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament
appearances, and Babcock is the author of Huskers on the Hardwood, a
Nebraska basketball history book published by the Lincoln Journal Star.
Rosenthal is the Husker men’s basketball beat reporter for the Journal Star.
All three are dedicated writers, and we should point out that our requests for
their All-Devaney opinions were made separately and their responses were not
shared with each other. With that in mind, please check out the men’s and women’s
All-Devaney Teams immediately below, plus Matt
Coatney’sthoughts
behind his selections near the bottom of this column.

You may have noticed that
two writers – Barfknecht and Babcock – have four of the same top five for the men's team: Hoppen,
Lue, Piatkowski and Smith. Barfknecht put Strickland in his top five while
Babcock went with Hamilton, a center who was named the Big 12 Conference Player
of the Year in 1999. Rosenthal's list included five shared first-team
selections with the combined Barfknecht and Babcock lists, but he did not
include Smith, who earned first-team honors from both Barfknecht and Babcock.

Positions and names get
jumbled when you match talent with logic and competitive savvy with
personal preference, especially when you add another important element into
the equation – how good were the teams that featured some of the Huskers’ best
players?

Selecting All-Time Teams Can Get
Uncomfortable

“I’m a little
uncomfortable putting an all-time team together,” Babcock said. “For instance,
where’s Aleks Maric? I respect him as much as I respect anybody, and yet
I didn’t put him on my first team or my second team. I had trouble overall
trying to differentiate first team from second team. Putting together teams
like this doesn’t take into account the need for role players, who provide
things other than those easily quantifiable.”

Babcock goes out on a limb
again. “Bruce Chubick would be on a team I put together, as would Jamar
Johnson, but neither is on either team,” he said.Ditto for Farmer, who only
played one season (1990-91) as a Husker.With those provisions,
Babcock placed two centers on his first-team. “Andre Smith,” he
said, “was a forward who was forced to play center much of the time. For what
he was asked to do, he could not have played much better than he did, game in
and game out.”

I ask Barfknecht, winner
of nine national writers’ awards and 12 Nebraska Sportswriter of the Year
honors, to elaborate on his selections, and I fully understand when he politely
declines. “I don’t want to torpedo our own double-truck blowout in February in
the World-Herald," he said. Let the record show that Barfknecht is the only
media member who’s covered all six of Nebraska’s NCAA Tournament games and
acknowledges having covered the Huskers 22 times in the NIT Tournament.

Rosenthal was hesitant to accommodate a request to analyze history because he’s much
younger than Babcock and Barfknecht. Hecan’t quite compare the older eras to the new ones, but he did his homework and presented an equally
viable starting five.

Husker Basketball Fans Have the Votes That
Count

The good news about our
all-time teams is that you, the fans, have the only votes that count. But based
on keener memories, we thought seasoned writers who have followed the Huskers
in five different decades, can help you hone your thoughts. Huskers.com has
given a lot of thought to compiling our list of meaningful achievers in both
Nebraska basketball programs. Hopefully, it will motivate all of you to vote
for your favorite Huskers. The idea is to use these votes to determine five
men’s players and five women’s players who will be named to the All-Devaney
Teams, both of which will be honored in each program’s final regular-season home game. They will be fitting tributes to two programs moving up to
play in what almost certainly will be considered one of America's finest basketball venues.

Voice of Huskers Selects All-Devaney Women’s Team

Since the Nebraska women’s
basketball team has not received the same sustained media coverage as the men’s
team, The N-Sider has asked Matt Coatney, the voice of Nebraska
women’s basketball, to name an All-Devaney Center Team, and not surprisingly,
he said “You Betcha!” and here is his all-time starting five:

Karen Jennings
Maurtice Ivy
Kelsey Griffin
Lindsey Moore
Amy Stephens

You better believe that
Coatney has his own incisive logic beyond each one of those five selections.“Karen
Jennings is the greatest player in the history of the program and a
National Player of the Year,” Coatney said before adding: “That’s a
no-brainer.”

“Maurtice
Ivy is a legend in the state of Nebraska and was the Big Eight Player of
the Year while leading the Huskers to their first conference title,” Coatney
said before adding: “She was the first 2,000-point scorer in school history.
Her resume speaks for itself.”

"Kelsey
Griffin is the best Nebraska player I’ve ever seen play in person at the Devaney
Center, at least since I’ve been a part of the program,” Coatney said.

“Amy
Stephens was a great player and probably the best shooter in school
history,” Coatney said. “Amy beats (fellow Alliance, Neb. native) Jordan
Hooper out on this team because Amy played four years in the Devaney Center
and Jordan has only played three.”

“Dominique
Kelley actually would have had a great shot at being on the All-Devaney
team, but she missed most of her senior season with an injury,” Coatney said of
Kelley, now a graduate assistant under Connie Yori.

“Lindsey
Moore is the best point guard in Nebraska history,” Coatney said without
hesitation before adding: “There’s no reason to have an All-Devaney Team if
Lindsey is not on the team.”

Knowing What the 'Experts' Think, What Do You Think?

Now that you're armed with what the "experts" think, go to the related links to
refresh your memory on the candidates you’re considering and then take the time
to vote for up to five candidates daily. The deadline to determine the
All-Devaney Teams is Friday, Feb.
22. The top players will be recognized at each program’s final regular-season
game inside the Devaney Center.

The Nebraska women’s last
home game is Sunday, March 3, against Penn State (5 p.m. tipoff). The
Husker men’s last home game is Wednesday, March 6, against Minnesota (8
p.m. tipoff).Both games will be
historic, and each Husker team will be celebrating Senior Night and Closing
Performance at the Devaney at the same time. For both teams, it will be one
last shining moment before the Huskers move downtown and into a whole new world
next October.